Hacker News Reader

Comment by oneplusone | Hacker News Reader

Personally I really dislike copy and paste on an iphone. It is really annoying to use and always comes up when you don't want it to.

View on HN

Have you ever tried it on an Android? I'll admit the popup coming up all the time was annoying at first. But once I saw the alternative -- which was unusable as far as I'm concerned -- I didn't mind it as much.

I've owned an Android phone since October and I have no clue how to copy & paste on it.

Android copy paste has been pretty seamless for me. Theres always the option there when I need it. Tap and hold and it'll appear.

I just tried it in the gmail app and I don't get any copy & paste options?

I just looked up how to do this, as I couldn't figure it out. Slide open the keyboard, hold the shift key and drag your finger across the text you want to copy. I just tested it on my Droid and it works. Not sure about other Android phones..

Seriously, hold shift on a touchscreen device? What is this, the 30s?

http://forum.androidcentral.com/general-help-how/8527-copy-p...

Copy and paste works great on my blackberry. Which btw, I switched to after 3 years with the iPhone (first generation and 3G) where I hated copy and paste for the reason stated above (shows up when I don't want it to).

Also, I now love my blackberry much more than I ever did the iPhone. Apps I use are available (maps, yelp, foursquare, pandora), and the multitasking and the advanced features of the OS just keep surprising me. I can use my blackberry to connect to a VPN (it's built in). Coming from the iPhone, I feel like my handcuffs have just been taken off and I'm now free to use my phone the way I want to.

Agreed. Android copy and paste only works in 1 out of 10 text fields I've tried it on. Sometimes UI elements give a long-press option to copy. Seriously, copying an address from a text message to google maps should NOT be hard.

I don't know what you are talking about. I just tested that, and it worked fine.

It doesn't work in yammer, market, contacts, google voice, or facebook. Google voice at least lets you copy the whole message, but then you have to paste and edit.

Really? I had the exact opposite experience - constant unwanted cut and paste dialogs on Safari/iPhone, none at all (but there when I wanted it) on Android.

Yeah, same here. When they added it to iPhone OS scrolling would constantly bring up cut and paste - I remember searching for a way to disable it.

Android's browser uses a long tap for cut and paste, so never had this problem.

Huh? The iPhone uses long taps or double taps for initiating cut/copy/paste. Long taps work everywhere, double taps work only where there’s no zoom function. That’s a pretty clearly defined set of gestures, how would you be able to bring up the dialog accidentally? Note that as soon as you initiate scrolling and then keep your finger on the screen, you can keep it perfectly still as long as you want or continue scrolling anytime you want. The cut/copy/paste dialog will not show up. There is no reason why that dialog should show up when scrolling.

The only way to bring up that dialog accidentally is to tap on the screen, keep your finger still for more than one second and then try to start scrolling. Seems odd for anybody to try doing that.

Perhaps they've improved things since I left iPhone. But I distinctly remember unwanted, aggressive copy / paste dialogs popping up when I wanted to do move around the page.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com